City of Protest and Prayer

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Arabs claim to see slights and denigrations everywhere. Sometimes this feeling is justified, sometimes paranoiac, sometimes both. The Hadassah Hospital, for example, now provides Arab patients with better service than any Arab hospital, but many Arab patients are dismayed that the doctors address them in Hebrew and that the food is Jewish. Such resentments are aggravated by class differences: the Arabs of East Jerusalem increasingly serve as the maids, waiters and construction workers of the Jewish West. "The Israelis are more capable at running a city," concedes a garage owner in East Jerusalem, "so the roads are better, the traffic, the sewage system, but there is no joy any more. We don't enjoy our lives." Adds his son: "It is impossible to deal with an Israeli, because his point of view is impossible. They believe it is their land, and that is that."

This half-suppressed Arab anger over Israeli rule periodically erupts in violence, as in the rock throwing on the West Bank this past month. The worst such outburst in Jerusalem was a bomb that exploded inside an abandoned refrigerator in Zion Square in 1975; 15 people were killed and 62 wounded. The most recent bombing occurred at the New Gate last August, killing two Italian pilgrims and wounding 27. "The P.L.O. doesn't like me being here, so we have a lot of problems," says Shraga Rozenzweig, 38, who has been bombed six times since he opened the prosperous Dolphin Restaurant in East Jerusalem in 1967. Two troopers with automatic rifles are stationed outside the restaurant's door.

Actual terrorism in Jerusalem is not very widespread. Perhaps because of intense police work, the total number of "incidents" since January 1981 is only 25 (the number of casualties: five dead and 35 injured). But bomb scares remain part of the city's everyday life. Signs warn of "suspicious objects," and handbags are searched at the Western Wall and at the great mosques. Phone calls to the police frequently bring a blue-and-white bomb-squad truck to investigate a dropped briefcase or a child's broken doll lying on the sidewalk. The rifle-carrying Israeli soldiers are all over downtown Jerusalem, usually in groups of two or three, lounging on street corners, sauntering watchfully through the Arab markets. The Jerusalem police force, which is about 10% Arab, boasts a number of Jewish-Arab teams, like Sasson Ovadia, a Kurdistan Jew, and Khalil Doube, a Jerusalem Arab. Says Khalil: "Policemen are a different breed. We let others deal with the politics. We don't make laws, we enforce them."

Such an attitude helps keep alive the idea that there must be some "solution" to the question of Jerusalem, some peaceable kingdom in which the wolf shall dwell with the lamb. Blueprints for settlement come easily. One expert has counted 45 plans during the period of the British mandate alone. But in the strenuous negotiations at Camp David that brought a compromise on other Arab-Israeli disputes in 1978, the only agreement that could be reached on Jerusalem was an agreement to omit all mention of the subject. Says a Western diplomat in Israel: "There are no solutions for Jerusalem. There are just next steps, new frameworks."

Most Arabs and Israelis agree on a few basic points: that the city should never again be partitioned, that there